Liam Stanley

'We're Reaping What We Sowed': Everyday Crisis Narratives and Acquiescence to the Age of Austerity

The British public have seemingly accepted the inevitability of the Coalition-governments ambitious fiscal consolidation plan despite the fact that it may harm many. In this context of general acquiescence, many existing accounts appeal to elites: notably, how the narration of a Debt Crisis has rendered the ‘age of austerity’ as both a logical and common-sense response to the UK ‘living beyond its means’ in the pre-crisis years. Utilising the notion that elite-driven crisis narratives must resonate with the ‘mood of the times’, this paper analyses non-elite crisis narratives. Specifically, it looks at how homeowners from middle-class neighbourhoods justify fiscal consolidation – drawing on a series of focus group interviews to do so. It is argued that the shared popular wisdom and experiences are extrapolated from the personal to make sense of the state level – but in a way that tends to legitimise spending cuts. A key aspect to this mood of the times, it is argued, is the notion that the British public are, as one participant put it, ‘reaping what we sowed’.

Introduction: Everyday narratives in world politics

Political science and international relations scholarship increasingly places substantive emphasis on, to put it broadly, the power of discourse in shaping world politics. This Special Issue develops a research agenda that seeks to consolidate a set of data collection and analysis strategies that can be used in studying the way in which elite-driven discourses are legitimated and challenged – in other words, an agenda for studying everyday narratives in world politics. In doing so, the Special Issue makes a threefold contribution: it analyses how key themes with world politics are reproduced and narrated; it demonstrates the need to go beyond ‘methodological elitism’ in understanding narratives, legitimacy, and world politics; and it highlights some of the methodological and practical issues in researching everyday narratives. In this introductory article, we situate the Special Issue within a critique of constructivist methodology broadly conceived, conceptualise everyday sites of politics, and finally, provide an overview of the articles in the issue.

Rethinking the Definition and Role of Ontology in Political Science

Ontological reflexivity is consistently posited as an important part of being a political scientist, yet the relevant literature has been criticised for being both complex and confused. In this context, the article has three aims: to clarify the purpose of ontology in the discipline; to highlight how ontological assumptions cannot be separated from other factors; and to show the relevance of ontological reflexivity. While the extant literature implies that such assumptions emerge from philosophical reflection, this article shows how epistemological decisions, mundane interests and political orientation can be just as important. Consequently, the original aims of the literature can be reinstated.

The Difference between an Analytical Framework and a Theoretical Claim: A Reply to Martin Carstensen:

Martin Carstensens recent article is a novel attempt to contribute a theory of incremental ideational change to the relevant discourse and institutionalist literatures. Noticing a potentially problematic twin focus on stable ideas and punctuated equilibrium, Carstensen outlines an alternative framework capable of capturing the true dynamism of political ideas. However, his article and analysis are based on the problematic assumption that analytical frameworks, such as historical institutionalism, make theoretical claims about politics, when instead their purpose is to create an underpinning prism for the construction of explanations. By ignoring this important yet subtle distinction, I claim, Carstensen creates a set of criteria for adjudicating the value of analytical frameworks that is both unfair and potentially inappropriate.

Legitimacy gaps, taxpayer conflict, and the politics of austerity in the UK

Research Highlights and Abstract Examines how fiscal deficit reduction has been legitimated in the United Kingdom Uses focus groups with taxpayers in order to explore how members of the public make sense of the fairness of austerity measures Highlights how participants consistently identified themselves as hardworking taxpayers who face a high tax burden due to redistribution to undeserving poor and rich others Argues that this leads to a ‘legitimacy gap’ in state redistribution that austerity measures can be seen to close Following the 2008 financial crisis, fiscal deficit reduction has become the name of the game for many Western states. This article uses focus group data to explore the legitimation of austerity in the United Kingdom. It is argued that fiscal consolidation speaks to real concerns citizens have over unfair redistribution to supposed ‘undeserving’ groups. The undeserving rich and poor are stigmatised during times of austerity since they are assumed to take more than they give from the public purse—leaving taxpayers, the assumption goes, to pick up the bill. By speaking to this legitimacy gap between prudent normative expectations and the lived experiences of state profligacy, fiscal consolidation can appear to speak to the interests of ‘the taxpayer’—a group conceptualised as a sense of group position that arises from collective sense-making rather than a pre-given constituency.

Using focus groups in political science and international relations

Following widespread use in political marketing and polling, focus groups are slowly gaining recognition as a useful and legitimate method in political science. Focus groups can, however, be far more than just a secondary qualitative method to primary quantitative public opinion research: they can be used to study the micro-level process of social construction. The process in which key sub-groups collectively contest and justify the actions of elite political actors via shared values is one way to study how legitimacy is conferred. This article therefore argues that focus groups can be particularly useful for research that examines everyday narratives in world politics.

Digital Debt Management: The Everyday Life of Austerity

Abstract:The age of austerity has seen large swathes of society adversely affected by ever-harsher austerity measures and protracted economic stagnation. This is compounded by the increasing routinisation of debt default and the everyday management of problematic levels of debt. This paper explores the everyday politics of indebtedness – the multifaceted ways in which household debt is transforming debtors’ lives – and the forms of resistance it can give rise to. In particular we focus on the role played in the UK by online resources as a new and increasingly important source of expertise and collaborative support. The paper’s object is a set of web forums that offer platforms for peer-to-peer (p2p) information exchange, specifically: Consumer Action Group, Money Saving Expert, Mumsnet. We analyse the types of expertise that are made available, how this is discussed and achieves legitimacy (or not), as well as the forums’ effects on forms of domestic accounting. We also compare the online forms of debt advice to conventional ‘real world’ debt management expertise. We conclude by considering how this enhances our understanding of the transformative impact of digital technologies on indebtedness as well as offering insights into the everyday life of contemporary austerity.

Governing austerity in the United Kingdom: anticipatory fiscal consolidation as a variety of austerity governance

Abstract This paper analyses the logic underpinning austerity governance in the United Kingdom. Taking the UK’s relative fiscal and monetary policy autonomy as a starting point, the paper unpacks and analyses how the United Kingdom has charted a successful course between the imperatives of social stability and market credibility. At the heart of this ‘success’ is a fundamentally anticipatory governing logic. Fiscal consolidation was justified and enacted as a pre-emptive and preventative intervention in order to anticipate an indebted and thus disciplined future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, then, UK austerity is not necessarily geared only towards swingeing spending cuts, because the direction of travel towards an imagined debt- and deficit-free future is just as important as reaching the destination itself under the logic of anticipatory fiscal consolidation.

Tax Preferences, Fiscal Transparency, and the Meaning of Welfare: An Experimental Study

What is the effect of providing personally tailored budgetary information on public attitudes to tax and spending? We address this question with a survey experiment based on the annual tax summaries introduced by the UK tax authorities in 2014. By subtly manipulating the categories of state spending – in particular, the controversial category of ‘welfare’ – to invoke a sense of unfairness, we show how budget information in general and the United Kingdom’s annual tax summaries in particular impact support for state spending. Though the stated aim of providing personalised tax receipts to income taxpayers is to enhance fiscal transparency, doing so may also damage support for state spending if the information provides a sense that existing redistribution is unfair. The article contributes to political science debates about public attitudes to tax and spending, the character and trade-offs of fiscal transparency, and the framing effects of welfare.

Book Review: Brett Christophers, Banking across Boundaries: Placing Finance in CapitalismBanking across Boundaries: Placing Finance in Capitalism by ChristophersBrett. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. 302pp., £19.99 (p/b), ISBN 9781444338287

International Politics and Film: Space, Vision, Power by Sean Carter and Klaus Dodds. New York: Wallflower Press, 2014. 126pp., £14.00, ISBN 9780231169714 Films and television productions have become frequent companions in political science classes, for obvious reasons. Not only do they illustrate subjects of relevance, be it the realities of war or people trafficking, but students also tend to appreciate movie-based discussions as they link leisure with academic interests. However, one may tend to look at film, as Carter and Dodds point out, ‘as simply a representational medium, one that rather imperfectly represented the complex business of war, diplomacy, statecraft, intelligence’ (p. 3). In contrast, the authors want readers to think of films as part of international politics, as a medium that can teach us to deconstruct geopolitical norms and categories. The book explores this interplay of film and politics along four main topics: ‘Borders’, ‘Exceptional Spaces’, ‘Distant Others’ and ‘Homeland’. Chapter 2 analyses how three films challenge the idea of definite borders, each taking on different border spaces. Carter and Dodds effectively show how these films reveal borders to be mere ‘human creation[s] that can be built, contested and undone’ (p. 40). In contrast to highly regulated borders, states of exception eschew these very norms and have become a resort in the ‘War on Terror’ – a phenomenon which moviegoers learn to comprehend in their geographic dimension. States of exception tend to be legitimised through our ‘Othering’ reflexes, which are further explored in chapter 4. With a keen eye on films such as the Turkish production Valley of the Wolves – Iraq, the authors reflect on the paradoxes of humanitarian intervention and its implications for Western diplomacy. Finally, chapter 5 explores the ‘geographies of both fear and security’ (p. 98) mapped out by notions of home. Instead of sticking to the types of movies one would associate with ‘Homeland’, the book takes the readers beyond Hollywood by including, among others, the celebrated German movie The Lives of Others. Overall, Carter and Dodds make a compelling case why film should be taken as more than just a distorting mirror of reality. Despite its short length, the book provides many rich and enriching examples of movies that can contribute to teaching International Politics, with movies from different parts of the world. One might miss great classics that would have been similarly fruitful, in particular as contrasting visions of a pre-9/11 and an allegedly bipolar world. We can thus only hope that the publisher’s ‘Short Cuts’ series may soon include additional volumes for political scientists.